Foundation of Physiology

• Biological approach to behavior

  Believes behavior to be a consequence of our genetics and physiology
• Biological explanations of behavior

  • Biological
  • Functional
  • Ontogenetic
  • Evolutionary
• Biological explanation


  Relates the behavior to an activity of the brain or other organs, correlates with the mechanics of the body, the chemical reaction that allows hormones to trigger brain activity and the path by which activity controls the movement of muscles through contractions
• Functional explanation


  Defines or elaborates why a behavior evolved in the way that it did, such as genetic drift or where a gene spreads within a small population by pure accident
• Ontogenetic explanation


  Describes the development of a behavior or structure, maps the influences of nutrition, genes, experiences, and the correlations or interactions of these factors in producing behaviors
• Evolutionary explanation


  Looks at a behavior or structure by way of evolutionary history
• Consciousness


  Your individual awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations and environment
• Mind-body dualism


  The belief that the mind controls the body's journey, causing separation, yet the body does exist and is physically taken on the journey
• Once psychology was established as a discipline separate from philosophy and biology, the study of the conscious experience became one of the first topics studied by early psychologists
• Structuralists


  Used a process known as introspection to analyze and report conscious sensations, thoughts and experiences
• William James compared consciousness to a stream; unbroken and continuous despite constant shifts and changes
• Sigmund Freud focused on understanding the importance of the unconscious and conscious mind
• Integrated Information Theory


  Looks at consciousness by learning more about the physical processes that underlie our conscious experiences, attempts to create a measure of the integrated information that forms consciousness, the quality of an organism's consciousness is represented by the level of integration
• Global Workspace Theory


  Suggests that we have a memory bank from which the brain draws information to form the experience of conscious awareness, offers a much broader approach to understanding how conscious works